Tuesday, 8 April 2014

Puritania...

There is really nothing else for it, people. I have embraced Puritanism. Not, I hasten to add, the kind of theological Puritanism espoused and propagated by Cromwell or Baxter (I am not a Calvinist and drink to excess far too often), but my own brand of "nothing." A new Dark Age is upon us and if we would distinguish between good and evil then it behoves us to become impervious to all influence of any kind, if we can find the mastery. The safest place in the world is the place where nothing else can come in.

Therefore, by the authority of Almighty God, I exhort you to dismantle any and all unnecessary trappings of the modern world in your homes! Stop watching television, stop reading newspapers, delete your social networking accounts, stop using your mobile phones except in extreme cases of emergency (and even then, try and find an excuse not to use them), curtail the amount of time you spend on the Internet, make yourselves completely oblivious to everything and everyone around you; then wrap yourselves in a dressing gown and lie down on your bed and just wait.

For a moment I had feared for a moment that you had joined the likes of that regicide Cromwell.

I try to test everything; and hold fast to what is good. Not many things are good, evidently. My view on technology is close to what is known as "appropriate technology", which seems to be a sound via media between luddism and full-technological madness. The internet itself has become my window to the past, however.

Cutting yourself off completely only seems feasible if you've obtained the skills to live "in deserto" and grow your own food. Until then, interacting with the world is unavoidable. Still, as some Orthodox say: Death to the World!

You're absolutely right about total self-sufficiency. I am quite simply not capable of that. As for the Internet, it does open up a lot of doors. I see the internet as a kind of corridor with doors on either side. Not all of them open up onto rooms with nice furniture and windows, of course.

Have you ever thought about farming? That being said, I have translated documentation about modern tractors, and how they plough a field using GPS and have goodness how many gizmos in the tractor cab. The tractor does the work and Farmer Giles reads his newspaper - until it goes wrong.

There's always a compromise to make with the world. I'm a country dweller, but do what amounts to a city job - translating and dealing with companies via the Internet. If someone pulls the switch I'm going to have to start digging my vegetable patch and breeding rabbits (and learn to have the guts to kill them).

I'm an incurable Romantic, but we still have to have the grit to carry on, keeping the gizmos at bay as much as possible, but knowing they're not completely avoidable. I have to use a gizmo to write this comment.

This sounds too much like that French/Lebanese movie- Chicken with Plums.The lead character decides to die and takes to bed, largely because he imagines most forms of suicide too undignified.

Recently, it dawned on me that true liturgies are a city level phenomena. Does that make sense to you? I mean ancient cities, usually with walls, a lower population than our modern urban centers, and generally with a people who are ethnically different enough for folks to look at them and say, 'oh, he's a Roman,' or 'he's from Milan', etc...

Do you refer to the rites of Byzantium, Milan, Toledo, etc? In which case, I had never given that much thought. I guess that might have something to do with "prestige," almost like the privileges of the bishop of the city of Rome.

Well, I am thinking of liturgy in terms of something that must have emerged naturally over time in a city, instead of imposed from an authority or elsewhere. It wouldn't be constructed whole cloth out of some bishop's mind. Perhaps it would initially be copied from somewhere else, but as time went on the feedback the clergy got from the people would lead them to make iterative changes.

So, if we want something authentic again, build a city- a proper one, and as generations go by, iterate. Clearly I would have to be immortal, and quite wealthy, just to run the experiment.